Time To Sharpen My Focus

I Need To Sharpen My Focus

I know I’m not alone in this. All entrepreneurs find themselves from time to time drifting. By drifting I mean we get in that mode where we’ve half started a bunch of things. We’re always trying something new and there’s nothing wrong with that. When it’s no good is when that bunch of things stops us from doing the things that bring us closer to our goals. More importantly, it separates us from connecting with our people. That always means we’re getting away from the things that also make us money. That’s when I know it’s time to sharpen my focus.

What’s Distracted Me?

I am beginning to work again with a mentor I haven’t worked for in a long while. The purpose of this connection is to help me restart my niche site building business. The mentor I speak of has his own system he has refined over the years and it is proven to work. He is one of those people that just wants to help me succeed.

And no, he’s NOT asking me to buy anything or charging me for anything.

He wants me to see that it IS a viable business model and that I too can make it work if I do the things he has.

Make no mistake, he tells it like it is and has sternly advised I need to sharpen my focus!

To prepare for this, I’ve gone back to a few of my remaining sites and cleaned them up so that Google can stop hating them-LOL! A lot of affiliate links not nofollowed and other things Google’s not crazy about. I’ve installed a new theme on them and gone back and deleted all the crap content, outdated or redundant plugins and just left them be.

At the same time, I’m trying to help a friend of mine get his Woocommerce site up and running. I’m doing mostly the tech and marketing stuff but it’s another time issue.

Beyond that, I’m still working with Yaro Starak’s Laptop Lifestyle Community and building a site from the ground up using his Blog Mastermind program.

Throw in a few nagging on and off health issues (mostly stress related) and you’ve got a pretty full calendar. A calendar that can have me turning around and realizing a morning has disappeared with very little to show for it.

How Will I Sharpen My Focus?

Here’s the pledge I made to myself.

For the next thirty days I will:

Start off my day writing and NOT reading email. I’m doing this blog post immediately following my gratitude journal which has been a habit of mine for more than five years. Even if it’s just sketching out a sales page! Words have got to be written before anything else happens that day!

Leave the sites I updated ALONE for 30 days. No new content or tweaking. Security plugin updates only!

Finish getting my friend’s Woocommerce site up and running and only commit to one hour per week of support. I’ll use the timer on my iPhone to keep me honest. I’ll let him know my plans too.

Commit to putting up one niche site per month for the remainder of this year. This will take me less and less time as I do it more and get feedback from the mentor I spoke of.

Pick up the Blog Mastermind course where I left off and continue building that site from scratch. I already talked about having the site built for me for the first time in my online career. So glad I did.

Start every day reviewing my one year, five year and some day goals. Making adjustments as things get marked off.

Make sure my first actions every day move me closer to my income/impact goals and discarding ANYTHING which does not! NO EXCEPTIONS!

For the next thirty days I will NOT:

Commit to ANY new projects! Period. I have a meeting this weekend with a friend I used to work with who has an acupuncture/Chinese medicine practice. The purpose of this meeting is just to see what he’s doing and making suggestions for what else he could be doing. NONE of this advice will involve me doing anything but POSSIBLY building him a simple 5 page website. That should take me about two hours total. In no case, will I end up in the middle of building his business. Not at this point anyway.

Continue to put ANY time into ANY site that’s not making money! The only exception will be the monthly niche site additions and the Blog Mastermind site. All other niche sites will be left alone.

Allow myself to keep working on ANYTHING during the day that is only frustrating me. I will stop and move on to something else. Anger/Anxiety can shoot a real hole in an otherwise productive day.

Keep working on projects that haven’t born fruit in many years. I’m quitting them and getting back to things that HAVE made money or increased readership at least.

Keep any domains that fall into the previously mentioned unfruitful category. Sites will be taken down and content deleted.

What Do You Think?

I know for any entrepreneur trying to sharpen their focus is a real challenge. We delude ourselves into thinking keeping busy is keeping productive. I hope I’ve helped you see how this is rarely the case. Busy is just busy. Ticking off activities on a list is just that. That’s not saying anything about the hit to your mindset either!

What makes the real difference is being courageous enough to look at what’s working and what’s not and making the tough calls. Quitting long term projects that aren’t helping you grow your income, presence or impact is just something that’s got to be done if you want to finally have the success you started your business to achieve.

What things are you struggling with that are keeping you from sharpening your focus? Leave me a comment below and let’s talk about it. Also, if you’ve enjoyed this article please use the sharing buttons below to give others a chance to benefit from it.

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2 thoughts on “Time To Sharpen My Focus”

Very good read, relatable and very honest, which is a positive thing. I guess our troubles with focus overlap. Getting new ideas all the time and thinking they’re better than the one I was working on. And then doubt sets in. But because I’m in such a hurry to earn some money, somehow I got the idea that I have no time to validate my plans. I too am working on a site with the Blog Mastermind System, but my focus the next to week will be on one thing: recording a beginners guitar course, and selling it on Teachable (a website/app that allows you to create and sell courses, and it’s even possible to integrate the Teachable course part perfectly into your WordPress website/blog. But at first I will only use the Teachable interface, for the sake of speed. And the other thing I must do is record some videos of me playing a few very high level guitar songs and put them on my website and YouTube, to give myself more credibility as a teacher for the course I’m selling.

Hi Sem,
Great to have you reading and benefitting in any way from my writing! Thank you for stopping by and telling me what you’re up to!
I like what I’m hearing from you as to your ONE THING this week. Take full advantage of any platform you can to get your stuff out there. Good work! Adding the YouTube videos will just increase your reach.
Keep up the great work!
Jeff